I think you've rediscovered Teddy Bear Programming. The next stage in Zen for me was to be able to find those answers before starting the SoPW. I've now come full circle to a novice status in that when I start to ask a question, I nearly always finish and post it, but unlike the novice, I've already explained the problem to my virtual Teddy Bear, thus having eliminated those problems. I do find that my queries usually don't get as many answers, though :-)

Oh, didn't know the concept of Teddy Bear Programming before. But it makes sense.

I feel enlightened.

Don't use '#ff0000':
use Acme::AutoColor; my $redcolor = RED();
All colors subject to change without notice.

Lately I've been feeling different about asking questions. Yes, do what you can to solve the problem as that's where most experience will develop but why not share it with the community? I've beat myself up about asking questions. That can be good as it's forced me to improve my Perl and general problem solving skills but I sometimes feel that I (and others) benefit from different perspectives provided in the monastery.

While most of my questions have been of the type that I SHOULD (and do) solve on my own, some I feel were worth sharing. Recently I've been a little confused about regex lookarounds and when best to use them. I have questions about creating good data structures or how to find relationships within the raw data. Has it been asked before? Almost definitely. Are there readily available examples and lessons on these topics? Without a doubt. But I should sometimes try to present my own perspective and context to problems. I should put in the 15 or 20 minutes to compose those thoughts into a question that spurs discussion.

And for each of those times that we do solve our own questions following a good struggle, are they worth a meditation? Not always but maybe more often then we think.

As for me, I would answer ... “very urgently and emphatically... yes.”

If a colleague has good thoughts ... good to him or to her ... then, “I want to hear them, perchance to ignore them completely.”

If editing (or ignoring) is to be done, then let it be done after the thought has been committed forevermore to digital posterity.

I realized long ago that, when faced with a conundrum, it should be among your first responses to “Humbly Petition the Monks.”

The responses you might get might be terse, sarcastic, Zen, or (rolling my eyes now...) “very long-winded,” but they’re going to be experience and perhaps they will turn out to be the very thing that makes your cube fill-up with light bulbs.

Many thanks to my fellow Monks for all the light bulbs they have given me over these many years.   I have no idea if I have actually returned the favor.   (I hope so.)

I feel like a complete dork. I went to Google to find out what "SoPW" was, and the only two useful hits took me back to PerlMonks.

Seekers of Perl Wisdom. DUH.